Beta for All along the watchtower on N. Howser

[slindsay]

A friend of mine and I are planning on climbing in the Bugaboos for two weeks in August. Looking through the guide books and digging through tubes of the interweb for route information, the west face of the howsers kind of jumped out at me.

 

Of the west faces routes, All along the watchtower looks like the most reasonable choice since it seems to have less aid climbing (in fact goes free at 12-, supposedly). How feasible is this route to do in a push? I'd prefer not to slog pigs/ledge back there -- I imagine the approach is brutal enough without full wall gear -- but if it's necessary, so be it.

 

So, has anyone here done the route? If so, how much time did it take and how much were you freeing? Actually, any beta is welcome: approach, route, descent, etc. Is it as awesome as it looks? How does it stack up against something like Half Dome's Regular NW Face?

 

*edited because I don't know north from south*

 

Edited May 22, 2007 by slindsay

[Winter]

If you go, please post a TR. I stared in awe at that wall last summer on B-C. What an amazing place - I would love to take a shot at that line.

 

I've talked to folks that have gotten dropped off in East Creek by CMH. Not supposed to be that expensive. Up to you as to whether your style permits it. I haven't done the approach from East Creek to the base of the w face or around the other side of the Howser's so I don't know how bad it is, but gettting into East Creek isn't bad at all. Just descend from P-H Col in daylight if you got all your wall gear, and it'll be much easier.

[TeleRoss]

All Along the Watchtower is on N Howser.

[counterfeitfake]

well that is some good beta.

[slindsay]

Heh, yeah, realized that after I posted it -- was looking through the guidebooks late last night and my slow, reptilian brain was evidently confused. Minus ten points for me. I corrected the original post. It is now sans-dumbassitude.

[genepires]

if you have flexible plans and a large enough time table, you can fly in rather inexpensively. You wait till another pair of guys come in and share the ride. I think they charge by flight, not by person. We met some guys who had done this after we hiked in all the way. Flying in is the way to go and go well stocked and heavy!

 

no beta for all along the tower but why not do the becky/chiounard?

[slindsay]

We were actually planning on setting up a camp on the west side, doing the Beckey-Chouinard first, resting a day or two (or waiting for the weather), then trying All Along the Watchtower. The B-C looks pretty awesome as well, more big alpine crag route than big alpine wall route.

 

Flying in would be a pretty choice way to travel. We have about two weeks, not a huge amount of time, so it would probably be best to arrange the flight-sharing before hand. Any other groups feel like splitting a flight? It would be nice to set up camp with a bunch of booze and good food -- kind of cheating, but I'm not proud.

[TeleRoss]

Fly? Dude, its only a couple miles in.

 

[Colin]

I climbed the route a few years ago, and we did it in a push, which is very reasonable. Even if you were planning to bivy you absolutely would not want to bring a ledge or a haulbag - there are plenty of bivy ledges and the hauling would be horrendous.

 

We free climbed most of the route, and fully aided the 5-6 pitches in the big dihedral. If I were to do it again, now that I'm a slightly better rock climber, I think I would french-free most of the dihedral pitches, and only bust out the aiders for the A2/5.12- pitch. We placed one pin, but you can probably get by with none.

 

We approached down the gully from the col to the N of N Howser, which was a lot of loose 3rd class, but went pretty well. We brought no crampons on route, but one ice tool each. The approach from the opposite direction (rap in from near the base of the Beckey-Chouinard) is supposedly much better now, because I heard that the rappel stations were fixed with bolts, which would probably make it the way to go. Might want to verify that info from another source though.

 

You can certainly fly into East Creek, but I don't think it'd really be worth your money, since the approach is pretty short by BC/WA standards. Also, since the descent is down the east side of the towers, it doesn't really save you that much to be based on the west side.

 

We took 28 hours on route, including getting off route in the dark. For a comparison, I climbed the NW Face of Half Dome in 9 hours (but, I was definitely climbing faster at that time). I think you should expect Watchtower to take about twice as long as Half Dome. If it were in Yosemite, it would get climbed way, way, faster, but having no established belays, route-finding difficulties, and carrying a bit of snow/ice gear will definitely make things slower.

[slindsay]

Awesome -- thanks for the information, Colin. Looks like sacking up for a long push is probably the right way to do it. My half dome time is a couple of hours longer (12 hours for the route, not counting the approach/descent), but we weren't really hammering it or anything. 24-36 hours on route seems reasonable and fairly sane.

 

Mind if I PM you for more route info?